Rotterdam police use Zwarte Piet as a disguise

Rotterdam police are dressing up as Zwarte Piet to act as decoys and observers in ‘suspicious’ situations, the AD reports on Wednesday.

The use of the Piet disguise, with police officers being made up with black face paints to resemble the Sinterklaas servant, resulted in the arrest of one youth with a stolen iPad, the AD said.
Other people were given warnings for insulting the Piets. These included discriminatory and ‘sexually-tinted’ statements, the paper said, without giving further details.
‘You would not want to know all the things which are shouted at Piets,’ a spokesman told the paper.